What is this?
Exclude Job Function is an Opteo Improvement for LinkedIn Ads. When a specific job function in your campaign is consistently generating poor results compared to your campaign group average, Opteo recommends excluding it — stopping your ads from showing to people in that functional area and redirecting your budget to better-performing audiences.
Why exclude job functions?
LinkedIn lets you target people by job function — the broad functional area they work in, such as Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, or Operations. It's a wider lens than job title, covering everyone in a given department regardless of their specific role or seniority.
This breadth is useful for reaching large audiences efficiently, but it also means your campaign can end up spending across functions that are a poor fit for your offer. A cybersecurity software campaign might convert well from Engineering and IT but consistently waste spend on Sales or Marketing functions, where the audience has no technical buying authority.
Identifying which functions are dragging down performance manually requires digging through segment data across multiple campaigns. Opteo does this automatically, surfacing the functions worth excluding so you can act in one click.
How does this Improvement work?
Opteo analyses job function performance across your LinkedIn campaigns using up to 365 days of data — the longest lookback window we use across any platform, which reflects LinkedIn's lower traffic volumes compared to search platforms.
We flag a job function for exclusion when:
Its CPA is more than 2x higher than your campaign group average
Or its ROAS is less than half your campaign group average
It has enough impressions for the data to be statistically reliable (minimum 30, scaling higher for accounts with more conversions — LinkedIn campaigns require a higher impressions threshold than other platforms before Opteo will act)
When those conditions are met, Opteo shows you a comparison table of job function performance against your campaign group average, and lets you exclude the underperforming function with a single click. The exclusion is applied at the campaign level via the LinkedIn Ads API.
If a job function is still relevant to your audience — for example, if you're running awareness campaigns across a broad set of functions deliberately — you can dismiss the Improvement.
Technical notes
Why this recommendation appeared:
Job function CPA is more than 2x your campaign group average, or ROAS is less than half your campaign group average
The job function has sufficient impressions to meet LinkedIn's higher data confidence threshold
The campaign is active and the job function segment is enabled
Why you might not see this recommendation:
All job functions in your campaign perform within acceptable ranges
Insufficient impressions data — LinkedIn campaigns often need more data than other platforms before Opteo can make a confident recommendation
Only one job function is active in the campaign (Opteo won't recommend excluding your only audience segment)
How the analysis works:
Looks back up to 365 days of LinkedIn campaign data
Compares job function performance against the campaign group average (cost, conversions, and conversion value)
Applies a higher minimum impressions bar for LinkedIn than for Google Ads or Microsoft Ads, reflecting LinkedIn's lower traffic volumes
Exclusions are applied at campaign level